Twitter And Social Media Becoming A Voice For Those We Don’t Want To See – The Homeless [Video]
This is the Twitter that I can believe in. This is the social web that really matters and it is people like Mark Horvath who is going against all the trends and bringing us into the world of the homeless.
It is surprising when you search Twitter for “homeless” just how many people who are out there, either homeless themselves or trying to do what they can to raise awareness about the biggest black-eye that our society has against it right now.
Mark Horvath was homeless but now heads a site called InvisiblePeople.tv where he travels the country and brings us the stories of those who are currently homeless and those who have, with help, managed to rise above being just another statistic that no-one cares about.
Horvath is not alone either as a growing number of homeless people are taking to the web on blogs and on Twitter in an effort to change the stigma associated with being homeless. People like Gary aka John Doe who writes on his Homeless in Boston blog and was featured in a story on Boston.com that begins like this
Gary Johnston says he once worked as an executive sous chef creating dishes at a hip Manhattan bistro. He spent his time, he says, playing his acoustic Ibanez guitar, eating crab sushi and enjoying the colorful culture in his native Brooklyn.
Ten years later, Johnston now calls a homeless shelter in Cambridge home. His days are filled with therapy appointments. He eats at soup kitchens and bundles up in thrift store layers to face the brutal weather.
via All Twitter
While the most common perception of the homeless is that of being a bunch of losers who don’t give anything back to society it is people like Horvath, Gary, and Cary Fuller who prove this fallacy wrong. Cary is a homeless single mother of two, somewhere in Seattle, who pursuing a bachelor’s degree in health services administration as well as being a relentless advocate for the homeless community.
This is what the social web is about folks – making a change – not marketing some company’s brand. This is why things like Twitter and the social web is important not because you can share photos of some duck-lipped wannabe beauty queen.
Comments
About the Author
Steven Hodson Steven has been around the tech world long enough to see most of the stuff we think of cool happen before which leads to a certain bit of cynicism that has contributed to him being known as the cranky old fart of the Internet. Besides sharing some of the goodness that he finds with you here at 42x you can also find him curating some digital goodness at Winextra (tech type stuff) and Rotten Gumdrops (for your daily dose of WTF).
Related Posts
The Rise And Glorification Of Stupid In Our Social Media World →
Today’s Nasty Twitter Rumor – No Third Party Image Services From Its Apps For You →
Apparently One Third Of US Population Says “No” To Using Twitter And Facebook For Signing On →
